yugoslavias implosion

160
ChApter 2
carried threats to “all who believed that they can break up Yugoslavia
by a fait accompli policy.” 240
As the crisis deepened, the Army leadership cast about for
new ways of swaying public opinion. Among other steps, the ypa
introduced the office of spokesman for the Federal Secretariat for
National Defense and began issuing public statements. The propaganda
effort through Narodna Armija was amplified by the launching
of a journal of military-political affairs controlled by the ypa’s Military-Political
Department, with the object of enlisting the support of
active and retired officers and noncommissioned officers. 241
The perceived foreign threat was loudly trumpeted by Belgrade
dailies, which claimed that the “Vatican has played a very significant
part in the Yugoslav events,” the “Vatican has provided the
funds to arm the Croatian army,” the “old imperial appetites have
been revived in Austria and Turkey,” and so forth. Many intellectuals
advanced the thesis that a “Fourth Reich” would soon follow the
reunification of Germany. 242 However, the truth was the opposite:
the international community strove to help Yugoslavia emerge from
crisis. General Svetozar Oro, the head of the Political Department
until his retirement in 1984, contends that the “external threat was
invented in order to refashion the country into a ‘Serboslavia’ under
the pretext of ‘saving Yugoslavia.’”
The ypa and the Serbian leadership were in full agreement
that the Serbs were the salient factor in integrating Yugoslavia
because they were its most widely distributed nation; they had created
both Yugoslavias; historically speaking, they were Yugoslavia’s
true champions; and Serbian national consciousness ought to be
acknowledged as a counterbalance to other nationalisms not based
240 Veljko Kadijević, Narodna armija, June 27, 1991 .
241 Narodna armija sought to discredit the leaders of new parties and
movements, particularly before elections in Croatia and Slovenia .
242 Dobrica Ćosić, Srpsko pitanje I, Filip Višnjić, Beograd, 2002 .